| Posted: 06 July 2025 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | 7
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This isn't the result of prejudice. But an increase in prejudice has absolutely been a result of the way our culture has been moving in the last few decades. Remember - according to the American National Election Study, 13% of Obama's voters in 2012 voted for Trump in '16. And I bet you if we looked back at Obama's voters from his first term, that number would be even higher.
So, what explains this?
I have believed since Obama was elected in a groundswell of support against Establishment Candidates like Hillary Clinton, backed with the evidence of the amount of support Ross Perot had across two elections in the 90's, that the critical ingredient to being elected in modern America is that the candidate must be an outsider of the establishment who threatens to disrupt the American system of democracy.
In many ways, Trump's triumph over sanity occurred because people actually believed that Obama was the "change" President, but he he was in many ways as "Establishment" as the rest, and the Democrats followed up his presidency by platforming a steady string of undesirable Establishment candidates.
So why do people regularly vote for and support anti-establishment, cult-of-personality type leaders who aren't actually working on behalf the people who got them elected? Well, if you've ever passed through the Rust Belt, you might begin to get an idea as to how it happens.
The truth is, the political establishment abandoned working class Americans decades ago. The wealth disparity is greater than ever - or at least maybe since the Depression. I grew up in a small town in NY state, and every time I go home to visit my family there I drive by dozens of homes that are falling apart, with sagging roofs and peeling paint, I drive past the burnt down husks of homes that nobody ever bothered to tear down or rebuild, I drive by shutdown factories ... these people are hopelessly poor. Hopelessly.
Couple the wealth disparity with a steady stream of skewed news and misinformation, and you get a volatile situation where a large segment of people see no reason not to just let it burn down.
It's way, way more complicated than "they're ignorant racist idiots." Edited to add: and let's not forget that Trump got a larger segment of minority voters this time around than he did previously. It really is more about destroying the broken system than it is winning some bizarre social justice war ... and people aren't capable of recognizing that all they're doing is bringing greater hurt to everyone, themselves included, through the choices they've made to elect this orange turd.
Really the only chance that was ever left to the Democratic Party was to read the room and run a populist candidate - and they have no room for populist candidates in their party, because actually focusing on improving the lives of the American people would disrupt the Democratic Party establishment just as much as it would disrupt the entire country. They fought tooth and nail against Obama in '08. They - the party, not the people - went all-in on Clinton in '16. They shut down Sanders at every opportunity and even now people like AOC are considered "fringe" within their own party.
And I say that "only chance" was in the past, because if it's not obvious, it's over now. They control the mechanisms of power. No way do they give that up.
Edited by Evan S. Kurtz on 06 July 2025 at 5:42pm
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